The VLBA Calibrator Survey—VCS1

By Anthony J. Beasley, David Gordon, Alison Peck, L. Petrov, D. MacMillan, E. Fomalont, Chopo Ma. 2002

265 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A catalog containing milliarcsecond-accurate positions of 1332 extragalactic radio sources distributed over the northern sky is presented—the Very Long Baseline Array Calibrator Survey (VCS1). The positions have been derived from astrometric analysis of dual-frequency 2.3 and 8.4 GHz VLBA snapshot observations; in a majority of cases, images of the sources are also available. These radio sources are suitable for use in geodetic and astrometric experiments, and as phase-reference calibrators in high-sensitivity astronomical imaging. The VCS1 is the largest high-resolution radio survey ever undertaken and triples the number of sources available to the radio astronomy community for VLBI applications. In addition to the astrometric role, this survey can be used in active galactic nuclei, Galactic, gravitational lens, and cosmological studies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0546ff055dfe52700f3edab89c43048363f5175e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Y. Kovalev
3. M. Lister
4. T. Savolainen
5. M. J. Reid
6. A. Pushkarev
7. M. Honma
8. E. Orlando

In Instrumentation

1. M. J. Reid
2. M. Honma
3. Luigi Foschini
4. R. Blandford
5. A. Celotti
6. K. Menten
7. C. Fassnacht
8. O. Paris

Citations in the corpus

• THE SECOND REALIZATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CELESTIAL REFERENCE FRAME BY VERY LONG BASELINE INTERFEROMETRY (2015, methodology): “Two extensions, adding 109 additional sources [Fey et al., 2004] were later made using several years of newer VLBI data, including the first of a series of Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) Calibrator Surveys (VCS) [Beasley et al., 2002].”
• THE FIRST CATALOG OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI DETECTED BY THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE (2010, methodology): “The same association method can be used at low latitudes; most of the candidate counterparts in this region are drawn from the VLBA Calibrator Survey (Beasley et al. 2002; Fomalont et al. 2003; Petrov et al. 2005, 2006, 2008; Kovalev et al. 2007).”
• Radio sources in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei IV. Radio luminosity function, importance of jet power, and radio properties of the complete Palomar sample (2005, background): “All of these source positions have been updated to reflect the latest (as of January 2004) phase calibrator positions (expected accuracy ∼1 mas; Beasley et al. 2002).”
• The third realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame by very long baseline interferometry (2020, methodology): “…National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. from a series of VLBA Calibrator Survey (VCS) astrometric campaigns carried out between 1994 and 2007 (Beasley et al. 2002; Fomalont et al. 2003; Petrov et al. 2005, 2006, 2008; Kovalev et al. 2007).”
• The Measurement of the Light Deflection from Jupiter: Experimental Results (2003, result): “These properties are in agreement with previous observations of J0842 (source names will be abbreviated) and J0839, which show little long-term structure changes (Fey & Charlot 2000; Beasley et al. 2002), whereas J0854 is a known variable source.”
• Parallaxes and proper motions of interstellar masers toward the Cygnus X star-forming complex. I. Membership of the Cygnus X region (2011, methodology): “These observations revealed two compact background sources, J2045+4341 and J2048+4310 (hereafter J2045 and J2048); we also used J2029+4636 (herafter J2029) from the VLBA calibrator survey (Beasley et al. 2002) separated by 4.”
• Properties of flat-spectrum radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies (2014, background): “VLBI results at frequencies below 15 GHz come from the VLBA and global VLBI astrometric and geodetic experiments (Beasley et al. 2002, Fomalont et al. 2003, Petrov et al. 2005, 2006, 2008, Kovalevet al. 2007, Piner et al. 2012, Pushkarev & Kovalev 2012).”
• MOJAVE. X. PARSEC-SCALE JET ORIENTATION VARIATIONS AND SUPERLUMINAL MOTION IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2013, methodology): “Due to the lack of redshift information for the full VLBA Calibrator Survey, our low-luminosity sample is not complete.”
• Opacity in compact extragalactic radio sources and its effect on astrophysical and astrometric studies (2008, methodology): “0.1 mas accuracy, similar to the accuracy of radio source positions from the ICRF and the VLBA 1 Calibrator Survey (Beasley et al. 2002; Fomalont et al. 2003; Petrov et al. 2005, 2006; Kovalev et al. 2007; Petrov etal.”
• VLBA Determination of the Distance to Nearby Star-forming Regions. II. Hubble 4 and HDE 283572 in Taurus (2007, background): “All four calibrators are very compact extragalactic sources whose absolute positions are known to better than 1 mas (Beasley et al. 2002).”
• VLBA Determination of the Distance to Nearby Star-forming Regions. I. The Distance to T Tauri with 0.4% Accuracy (2007, unknown): “J0428+1732 is a very compact extragalactic source whose absolute position ( J2000:0 ¼ 04h28m35:633679s, J2000:0 ¼ 17 32 023:58799 0 0) is known to better than 1mas ( ¼ 0:59 mas, ¼ 0:89 mas; Beasley et al. 2002).”
• The VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey at 5 GHz (2006, methodology): “Error analysis One half of the sources scheduled for VIPS has been observed as part of the VLBA Calibrator Survey (Beasley et al. 2002, Fomalont et al. 2003, Petrov et al. 2005, 2006, Kovalev et al. 2007, Petrov et al. 2008) and RDV pro- gram (Petrov et al. 2009) aiming to determination of source…”
• A Preliminary VLBA Distance to the Core of Ophiuchus, with an Accuracy of 4% (2008, background): “327) is known to better than 0.5 milli-arcsecond (mas –Beasley et al. 2002).”
• A Compact Supermassive Binary Black Hole System (2006, methodology): “Archival Observations To further study this source, we obtained fully calibrated VLBI data taken in 1990 (Xu et al. 1995), in 1996 (VCS; Beasley et al. 2002), in three epochs (1994, 1996, and 1999) of the CaltechJodrell (CJ) Proper Motion Survey (Britzen et al. 2003) and in 2003 (Maness et al.…”